Larnedello, A Geothermal Acitivity in Italy
Geothermal is another energy sources in Italy besides oil and gas. From 6.7MW, it was expanded to 60MW and this sources has provided 3.2% of energy sources in Italy. As one of renewable energy sourceses, Geothermal has become another options to fulfill energy demand worldwide.
Currently, Italy has managed build 31 georthemal plants and able to dig about 509 wells as far as 459km with a capacity of 220MW in a total. The type of conversion used depends on the state of the fluid (whether steam or water) and its temperature. Dry steam power plants systems were the first type of geothermal power generation plants built. They use the steam from the geothermal reservoir as it comes from wells, and route it directly through turbine/generator units to produce electricity. Flash steam plants are the most common type of geothermal power generation plants in operation today. They use water at temperatures greater than 360°F (182°C) that is pumped under high pressure to the generation equipment at the surface. Binary cycle geothermal power generation plants differ from Dry Steam and Flash Steam systems in that the water or steam from the geothermal reservoir never comes in contact with the turbine/generator units.
In Malaysia, we do not have geothermal sourceses to produce electricity. Geographically we are not in a circle of volcanic path and our electricity is now depending on hydro generator and gas power plant.
Yestarday, the weather was so warm to begin our journey to Larnedello, a location of Geothermal Plant in Italy. Larnedello is a region which is located sowewhere in South of Tuscany and it took us about 2 1/2 hours by road from Firenze to reach this place. Interestingly this journey provides enormous excitements with enjoying the sightseening of another side of Tuscany. The valleys, hilly villages, wide green grass and grape farms have become an usual landscape to the outsiders and also for people from here. I was sitting next to Yasnul for this 2 plus hours journey and it becomes a common for both of us to enjoy the views of this journey.
Since this morning i hadn't take my breakfast and it really made me horrible during this journey. I don't think i was late woke up to prepare my breakfast. Usually i go to GE Learning Centre around 8.00am but this morning, we ( with Bapak Rudi) departed early in order to catch the bus. And this made me travelling without a breakfast. Anyway, it doesn't matter much for me and sometimes i prefer to no breakfast. During the journey, i managed to snap few pictures of wide-open grass fields and it's really like a golf field!. If you were with me, i am really you would say, OMG!...it's damn beautiful, and sometimes it came out of my mouth saying that " How great to have a house here." But, believe me nowhere else is better that this hilly, valley area. With a cold breeze winding, cloudy with a bright day was really brought you to another world.
As i mentioned earlier in my previous post, Italy is really different with other European countries. Every villages keeps a very well hidden-thousand secrets and histories. The villages aged i believe more than houdreds years stand rigidly on the top of the hill and it provides a wonderful view from the valley and far from horizon, the sun light completes the landscape with very beautiful combination of panoramas.
The winter is almost gone and the villagers start their farming with variety of vegetables and flowers. The trees start to blooming and the aroma of flower ascents reaches my nose everytime i stepped out from the bus. It is really alive!.
The cooling tower model above is basically a model constructed for tourists purposes which was placed in a museum in Lardenello. This museum was initally constructed to keep all historic geothermal activities in Italy, this museum was expanded with additional other technologies used for geothermal activities such as instrumentation control, tools, electronic devices etc.
Guys! this is one of geothermal wells ( just a small well) located in the museum of geothermal. The smell of H2S was terrible and obviously you can smell a rotten egg everywhere in this place. The steam from undergroup is basically mixed with other minerals e.g sulfur, mercury calcium etc and it is not a processed steam with clean contains. So off course the vapour released contains a mixture of chemical contents. 
We went to one of the steam valve which was located on top of the hill. For a demonstration purposes, operator released a steam which provided high pitch frequency and it is like you standing next to gas turbine. The sound was loud even louder of steam turbine in my plant. The steam released was i believe almost 3.5 bar and it was straight away from thousand miles from the ground. The insulated pipeline was seen everywhere which transports the steam to the geothermal plants.
The picture above is one of the cooling towers of Geothermal plant which is a modern design for geothermal plant. Convertionally for the cooling tower, we can see from far a con shape but this one is a bit different with other cooling towers in Lardenello. The steam from the steam turbine is routed to the cooling system to condensate the steam and send it back for reinjection process.
Sunset...beautiful!. when we were on the way back home(florence)
posted by Love Is Love @ 9:31 AM
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